Ally’s burglar was just hungry mate

ALLY McCOIST thought he was confronting a burglar in his kitchen in the dead of night – but the intruder turned out to be Paul Gascoigne.

Scottish great McCoist and Gazza were team-mates at Rangers and lived in neighbouring villages.

But McCoist never realised he would be opening a self-service buffet for England midfielders suffering from a late-night attack of the munchies.

McCoist said: “He gave me one of the biggest frights of my life. At around 3am, when I was asleep in bed, my wife nudged me and said she thought there was someone in the house downstairs.

“Sure enough, I could hear a noise which was quite disturbing. The first thing I grabbed was one of my golf clubs, a three iron.

“To be honest, I don’t know why because I couldn’t hit a three iron at the best of times!

“As I went downstairs, I could tell the noise was coming from the kitchen. I’m now faced with confronting a burglar.

“I kicked open the kitchen door and straight away I recognised the back of Paul Gascoigne, who is looking into my fridge. He didn’t even turn around.

“I asked him what he was doing. Still not turning around, he informed me he was making a sandwich. I told him it was 3.30am.

“He said he knew that but he had woken up – he still lived in the next village – and was feeling hungry. He had no food in his house so decided to come over to mine.

“I asked him how had he managed to get into my house. He told me he had remembered me talking to my wife on the phone and that I had mentioned the spare house key being in a bag under the oak tree.

“So when he was hungry, he decided to come over to my house, let himself in with the spare key and make himself a sandwich.

“I finally went back upstairs and my wife asked me what was going on. I replied that everything was fine, it was just Gazza making himself a sandwich!”